Voyages of Discovery

by David Boyle

EXPLORATION
2011
PAPER
144 PAGES

Splendidly illustrated in color, this compact chronicle of the Golden Age of European exploration (1492-1522) traces the voyages of Columbus, Magellan and others to Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific. Facsimile documents include ships' logs, drawings by explorers and letters home. (EXP90, $24.95)

Columbus, The Four Voyages

by Laurence Bergreen

HISTORY
2012
PAPER
422 PAGES

Though everyone knows that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, the gutsy, politically savvy, ferociously religious and increasingly deluded Admiral of the Ocean Seas organized three more daring voyages in his quixotic quest for a water route to Asia, all recounted in gripping detail by Bergreen, noted biographer of Marco Polo and Magellan. (EXP93, $20.00)

Explorers of the Nile

by Tim Jeal

HISTORY
2012
PAPER
592 PAGES

Tim Jeal widens his scope in this spirited new history of the great 19th-century quest for the origins of the Nile, covering the many expeditions and complex rivalries of Burton and Speke, Livingstone and Stanley and other Victorian adventurers with panache. (AFR287, $18.50)

Voyage of the Beagle

by Charles Darwin

EXPLORATION
2002
PAPER
468 PAGES
FAVORITE

The wide-eyed tale of a young man on a five-year voyage that changed his life -- and our way of thinking about the world. First published in 1839, it's still a marvelous introduction to the wildlife, nature and allure of South America. (GPS02, $12.95)

1493, Uncovering the New World Columbus Created

by Charles C. Mann

HISTORY
2012
PAPER
532 PAGES

Mann's eye-opening tale of the great Columbian Exchange, the biological tsunami unleashed by the introduction of foreign species of plants and animals both in Europe, and especially, in the Americas. (NAM70, $16.95)

Round About the Earth

by Joyce E. Chaplin

EXPLORATION
2012
HARD COVER
560 PAGES

Harvard Historian Joyce Chaplin's rollicking Round About the Earth traces the outsized personalities, grand enterprises and inspired folly of those globe-trotting men and women who have circled the planet over the last 500 years. Beginning, naturally with Magellan, she covers scientists, explorers, pirates and empire builders from James Cook to Charles Darwin, Phileas Fog (she includes fictional characters too), Amelia Earhart, Yuri Gagarin, and John Glenn. (EXP99, $35.00)

Captain Cook, Master of the Seas

by Frank McLynn

BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
2012
PAPER
490 PAGES

McLynn re-creates the remarkable voyages that took the famous navigator from his native England to the remote Pacific, showing hiim to be a brave and brilliant seaman, who transcendied his humble beginnings as a deckhand and triumphed through good fortune, courage, and talent. (PAC237, $20.00)

The Last Crusade, The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama

by Nigel Cliff

HISTORY
2012
PAPER
547 PAGES

Nigel Cliff rescues the ambitious Vaso da Gama from the shadow of Columbus, revealing not just the drama, treachery and audacity of his voyages, longest of the day, but also the impact of the arrival of Christian Portugal in the Muslim East. Cliff's travels in da Gama's footsteps to add detail, authenticity, and a contemporary perspective to this already epic tale. With red-crosses emblazoned on their sales, these explorers circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and, ultimately, found the sea route to the riches of the fabled Indies, that grail which had eluded Columbus. (IDA651, $17.99)